sebelius | Michael Bradley

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November 19, 2013 · 1:19 pm

For College Students – Welcome to Cynicism 101

I know a lot of you young college students were all excited when President Obama was elected and re-elected on a message of hope and change. I also know many of you were excited about “free health care coverage for all Americans” after all we live in such a rich country, why not? You were probably also excited when President Obama decided to take over student loans and not allow banks to rip you off any more on the rate increases.

[I plan to post a few cynicism lessons from time to time and promise to skewer all political parties, etc. I am not an anarchist but I believe in personal freedom and a small government. Unfortunately, those concepts are under attack by all parties.]

Cynicism is an attitude or state of mind characterized by a general distrust of others’ apparent motives believing that they are selfish in nature and/or displaying that themselves.

I am sorry to start your long descent into the never ending layers of cynicism, but here is what really happened:

1) Banks were making about $57 Billion per year off student loan interest.

2) Student loans were federalized (taken away from private banks) as a clause in the Affordable Healthcare Act (AHA), not to help you, but to get that $57 Billion to help pay for “free health care” coverage.

3) The Obama Administration put in automatic escalator calculations in your student loan rates that would have raised them to 7.5% from their former 1-2% range, raising the federal income off student loans from $57 Billion per year to about $350 Billion.

4) When students became outraged, Congress cut this percentage to 3.86 to 6.41% depending on the category of loan, basically still tripling the private bank rate, but telling you they ‘saved you money’ by a temporary one year cap. (http://studentaid.ed.gov/types/loans/interest-rates)

5) The evil banks meanwhile get loaned money from the federal reserve at the fed funds rate of 8/100 ths of a percent. That’s right. You pay at least 3.86% to get your education, while the evil banks get money from the Obama administration at 0.08%. (http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h15/current/)

6) The evil banks were bailed out and posted record profits this year.

7) Your current $54 per semester policies to cover your health while you go to college are now illegal under ACA. Your new plans will cost you $1,800 per year, a 1500% increase, even though you are not going to be sicker than you were before. This is so you can pay for the healthcare of older people through your premium, along with your higher cost student loans. (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/18/students-suffer-sticker-shock-from-obamacare/)

8) So you are going to tell them to take a hike? Sorry, the IRS will cut off your student loans, bill you a fine and withhold your refunds if you do not participate.

9) So far, less than 200,000 people have made it into AHA while over 15 million have had policies canceled. Some estimates show up to 100 million policy cancellations this year, due to regulations put in place by Secretary Sebelius under AHA.

10) Evil insurance companies no longer have to take risk, sell you plans, or price things individually. They just put three offerings on the exchanges and let the enrollees and profits roll in.

11) The Obama Administration spent over $600 million on Healthcare.gov and it still does not function.

12) The Obama Administration spent $4.4 Billion giving money to states for exchanges that do not work either.

Welcome to government run programs. This is how bad and costly it is just to get started. Just wait until they run short of money for the actual treatment of patients and see what happens then with waiting times and restriction of access to care and drugs.

Want to Be Angry?

I try to keep upbeat on my blog, so if you don’t want to hear about something infuriating…stop now and skip this post.

Prior to retiring to be a writer, I was a healthcare executive. I read the entire healthcare reform act bill, now referred to as Obamacare, and did an analysis. I was accused of being crazy, anti-Obama, anti-healthcare, alarmist, etc. I need to find that original analysis and reprint it. I was all too correct on how it would be implemented. For the record, I am for universal healthcare in the United States – but not run in any way by the government. I believe the patient and their doctor should control treatment. The only way to do that is to have the patient paying and selecting the care and the doctor charging and recommending the care. Having the government and an insurance company pay and decide sucks. Government paid vouchers for the poor to buy insurance is the way to do it.

But that is not the part that infuriated me. It was when I found out what was spent on Health.gov, the federal site. Mind you, this site, which does not function, is the ONLY thing the federal HHS had to do. It simply takes applications, then refers them to the state exchanges. The state exchanges then determine eligibility and screen for Medicaid and SCHIP eligibility, then give you a list of options and calculate your subsidy if any. The insurers then provide the medical treatment. HHS had four years – and ONLY one job to do…

1) They originally budgeted $100 million for this website – the cost has now soared to over $600 million;

2) They hired a company with a history of ripping off governments and not performing – http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/23/red-flags-company-behind-obamacare-site-has-checkered-past/

3) They knew about the problems and did not fix them;

4) They said now, they will bring in the best and brightest to fix it (why not do that to start with);

5) They won’t tell us how many people were actually able to sign up, but the number leaked out that nationwide, the first day – SIX, yes, one more than five, just six people were able to enroll;

6) Secretary Sebelius illegally went around the country raising funds for pro-Obamacare advertising and shaking down insurance companies, but didn’t get the website fixed. If you are willing to bend or break laws to get people to support it, why not actually get it to work too?

7) So now, the administration is bringing in the folks who did their campaign to help – http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/obamacare-healthcaregov-harper-reed

8) That’s right, Obama’s donor firm gets the money now – http://nypost.com/2013/11/01/obama-donors-firm-hired-to-fix-web-mess-it-helped-make/

9) The Democrats refused to let Republicans delay the individual mandate, even when they shut down the government to try.

10) As a result, people without insurance will be fined by the IRS or have their refunds withheld, even though those same people can’t actually get on the site to get their insurance.

11) Over 15 million people are losing their individual insurance policies and if and when they can sign up for the ‘free health care’, their premiums are going to double on average.

12) Up to 60 million other people are on the bubble as businesses decide whether or not to continue coverage.

Whether you are for or against healthcare reform, $600 million, crony politics, and people still can’t sign up?

Yep, I’m pretty fed up with crap. The worst part is I am paying for it, and you are, and our grandchildren each owe about $50,000 as well for the debt we have racked up for what?